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Akron is using federal Race to the Top money to double the retirement incentive for teachers from $500 to $1,000. So far, the district knows of 90 teachers who say they're retiring, about 20 to 25 more than usual, said human resources executive director Kathy McVey, who updated the Akron school board tonight on labor matters. It's too soon to say whether that will offset the 140 teaching jobs that must be eliminated for the next school year to avoid a $22 million deficit.

"We have to match up the people who are retiring with the openings that we'll have," McVey said. "We expect it will offset some of the layoffs that we have to do, but probably not all of them."

WASHINGTON: A new report says the number of Ohio high schools considered ''dropout factories'' jumped from 75 to 135 over the eight years ending 2010, an increase that far outpaced other states.

The data is part of research being presented Monday at the Grad Nation summit in Washington. The summit has been organized by the children's advocacy group America's Promise Alliance, founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham outlines the research on poverty and education in the Spring issue of American Educator: "Why does Family Wealth Affect Learning?" When scientists speak of poverty they use the term Socioeconomic Status (SES) to capture not only income, but education level and occupation.

Willingham focuses on two main categories: family investment models and stress models. Family investment theories explore all the ways that higher SES parents tend to invest in their children's social, academic and career-path development. They have more money, for sure, and can afford to live in healthier conditions with better nutrition and higher quality daycare and preschool. But they also spend more time with their children, on average, and engage them in stimulating conversations about the world around them. The stress theories are more directly biological: the high chronic stress common in low SES households floods young developing brains in hormones such as cortisol that directly impacts brain development, particularly in memory formation and regulation of emotions. Willingham points out that these theories of parental investment and stress are not mutually exclusive.

Joshua Woolls,an international business major at the University of Akron, won the $2,000 top prize at the 2011-12 World Collegiate Sales Open at Northern Illinois University. The competition is designed to mimic real-world activities that a sales representative would need to master, which may not be part of the college curriculum. Woolls expects to graduate this year from UA.

The Columbus Dispatch has a story mostly focused on Gov. John Kasich's support for Cleveland' s proposed school reforms. The story includes this little nugget:

''It follows a seven– or eight-year cycle,'' says retention researcher Lorrie Shepard, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. ''Right now, politicians are seeing retention as the remedy. Once they feel the negative side effects, they'll back off.''

Indian Hill High School in suburban Cincinnatti won the championship round in the state mock trial competition on Saturday, which you can see here. Press release from Ohio Supreme Court says this:

Since September, these students put in hundreds of hours of work alongside volunteer attorneys and judges. Their mock trial case was titled, ''State of Ohio vs. Storm Jackson.'' The defendant argued that using global positioning system data collected from his cell phone was in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

Kim Peer, an athletic training education program coordinator and associate professor of health sciences at Kent State University, was named to the Ohio Athletic Trainers' Association Hall of Fame. ?Marisa Lolli, a senior at Lake Center Christian School, won second place in prose/poetry at the State Speech and Debate Tournament. She competed against students from 85 Ohio districts on March 3-4 at Jackson High School. She is the daughter of Robert and Janice Lolli.

COLUMBUS: Teach For America, the service-oriented program that places recent college graduates in low-income public schools, will expand into Ohio this fall, organization and state officials said Wednesday.

Woodridge was the only district in Summit County asking for new money, and it narrowly failed.

The 6.83-mill levy had been expected to bring in about $3 million a year. It would have cost the owner of a $100,000 home, who now pays about $1,100 a year for school taxes, an additional $193 a 17 percent increase.

The Ohio Department of Education has agreed to sponsor two new start-up charter schools operated by White Hat Management: a dropout prevention high school in Warrensville Heights and a new K-8 school in Akron called Signal Tree Academy East.

ODE spokesman Patrick Gallaway said the state approved White Hat's applications on Feb. 21 after White Hat agreed to make changes assuring that the schools would have independent school boards. However, ODE rejected applications for four other state-sponsored schools.

It looks like Buckeye's 1 percent earned income tax is going down, but we'll have to follow up tomorrow on that one. Also not sure about Canton Local's bond issue also appeared to be failing. It looks like all the renewals passed, but we've got incomplete results from Stark and Medina counties.

Triway won, Woodridge lost a squeaker (Akron can tell you all about how that feels), and Field and Waterloo once again failed. They're the only districts I'm aware of that faced organized opposition (Portage County Tea Party).

The Woodridge levy failed by 249 votes. Cuyahoga Falls renews its levy. Manchester passing its renewal comfortably with one precinct left to count. In Wayne, Triway wins and Norwayne and Chippewa get renewals passed. Still waiting on results from Portage, Stark and Medina.

We'll be watching Woodridge closely, also Buckeye, which must pass an earned income tax or prepare for state takeover. Field and Waterloo in Portage County are trying to overcome Tea Party opposition. Triway in Wayne is looking for an earned income tax and Canton Local in Stark County has a bond issue on the ballot to build a new high school and middle school without help from the state school construction fund.

The Akron school board tonight voted to close Barrett, Essex and Rankin elementary schools. Superintendent David James also gave them a preview of pain to come, which could include the elimination of 140 teaching jobs for starters. The district must whack $22 million off of expenses by May, then pass a levy in November or face the prospect of cutting another $23 million this time next year.

The Woodridge school district covers nearly 43 square miles of hilly terrain from North Akron and Cuyahoga Falls deep into the Cuyahoga Valley National Park beyond Peninsula into a sliver of Brecksville on the north side.

So the district spends $1.6 million a year to provide bus service to every student from kindergarten to high school